I've got a new laptop and when I use the internet, if the page doesn't load in half a second it just comes up with the cannot display the webpage message, so I have to click it (or refresh the page) a few times before it'll bother to load. Any ideas why?

It's internet explorer by the way, save me your 'IE is rubbish' speeches, I tried firefox and chrome and didn't like them!

Thanking you!

who is your internet provider???

because some providers, especially if you're paying the cheapest rates, share your usage speed among others in the neighbourhood, so for example if your usage speed is 20MB and it's shared between say 10 other households at 6pm on a weekday then you're actually only probably gonna get 2MB if you're lucky as other households might have 3 or 4 people on the internet so your internet usage might be sacrificed.

i'm not sure on the exact terms and conditions of this, hopefully someone who knows it in more depth can help you, but i'm sure that this happens with all ISP's

another thing is that your laptop's wireless connection is too weak. i suggest not sitting too close or too far away from the modem but within sight of it (ie without walls in the way, not that they make much difference though)

otherwise if that doesn't work the only other thing i can suggest is to plug your laptop into the modem using an ethernet cable, if you STILL have the same problem, then i suggest getting back to us and i or someone else will probably be able to help you more

Well it's only done this on my new laptop, the last one I had (got rid of about a month ago) didn't do it at all. So I don't know if it's to do with the internet connection cos everything's the same as when I had the other one, unless some neighbours have changed to virgin? Haha

Help page

Ooo I'll try that when I get home, thanks!
(Love the avatar by the way )

Can you provide more details so we can help you?

make of laptop?
what Internet providor (isp) you with ?
what make wireless router are you using ?

As the laptop is new it may require newer drivers for the network / wireless card in your laptop.

also it may just be a coincidence your ISP is playing up just as you've gotten a new laptop

The laptop's called zoostorm I think. Sorry I'm such a dinosaur sometimes, what is an isp? And we just got a new router because the last one packed in about two weeks ago, and it was happening before and still is now so I don't know if it would be that, unless we got the same make! I'll check when I get home.

Ha could be! It's not a massive problem, it just gets annoying having to refresh two or three times, it's like it just can't be bothered loading it, it doesn't even try sometimes! Haha. So it's not a huge problem, I was wondering if there was some sort of 'give up if it takes too long' box I could untick or something but it appears not!

Thanks for the help, I shall answer the other questions when I get to the laptop!

ISP = internet service provider i.e. are you with plusnet, sky, virgin, BT etc.

and maybe clear all IE cookies, history, passwords, everything. and try it, or have you tried that?

Ooh I thought it meant that but wasn't sure! It's virgin, I know we seem to have a lot of problems with virgin with the internet/cable going down quite often but this has only happened with this laptop.

Haven't tried that but I shall, thanking you!

does it do it when you just turn it on? so literally its just booted up an you open IE straight away? Or will it do it even if its been on a while then you open IE?

just at any time. Like the other day I was on ragecomics so was on the first page for like ten minutes, then when I clicked on page 2 it went straight to the cannot display message, so I refreshed it and it did it again, then I refreshed it again and it worked. It's like it just can't be bothered sometimes, haha.

But it doesn't do it on just picture based websites, it does it for here, facebook, cosmo, etc. Just any site.

www.distrowatch.com

You're welcome.

Have you tried Opera, when I was having problems with IE a friend on a Photo Forum suggested it, I really like it the home screen where you can have large/small icons of your favourite sites, I'll post a screen shot if I get a min..

yeah I had opera on my old phone, never really thought of using it on the computer, will have a try thanks!